


Perspective

by stuff_and_nonsense



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-19 19:38:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17607674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stuff_and_nonsense/pseuds/stuff_and_nonsense
Summary: For a while, when he looks at Nott, Caleb can see her two different ways.





	Perspective

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I was going to switch over to Nott/Yeza after the last episode, but it turns out I have more of these two to get out of my system.
> 
> This is mostly Caleb introspection, set before Caleb and Nott meet the rest of the M9. Not about the recent backstory revelations, despite the maybe-confusing summary.

For a while, when he looks at Nott, Caleb can see her two different ways.

Most of the time, he sees his friend, the comforting figure he’s grown used to. Her yellow eyes and mobile ears are expressive and clever, and her teeth are just part of her smile. When they’re alone together, it never occurs to him to think about her looks; they’re busy trying to survive, and the differences between them become irrelevant next to that structure. She grows comfortable enough to leave her mask off around him, and he hardly notices. Later, when they grow closer and he begins to consider her more, what he sees is clouded with affection.

But occasionally it’s different, when they venture into a town. A guard will eye her suspiciously, or she’ll snarl as she pounces at a rat, and he’ll remember how she seems through a stranger’s eyes. How she looked to him when he first saw her – sharp-toothed, feral, alien. He still sees his friend – he’s never frightened or disgusted – but it’s a kind of double-vision, the goblin overlaid on the fond companion. It sends a sick pang of guilt and heartache through him every time.   
In a way it helps him protect her, makes him keep in mind how others will react. But it troubles him too, and the combination leaves him on the defensive. When she’s stared at, he pulls her in close and protests the glances a little too vigorously.

 

He’d had similar shifts in perception during his first years at school. He’d arrived at the Academy excited and confident, eager to find a place among people who could do what he did. It didn’t take long to realize that it would take more than magical skill to claim that place. A glance at his cheap clothes, a smirk at his accent, an offhand comment by other students who’d grown up in luxury could set it off, pull him outside of himself. He learned to see himself as his classmates did – poor, born to nothing. Part of him resented it; he was proud, in those early days, of his family and where he came from. But the second view won out. He’d decided to do what it took so that no one would look at him like that again, practiced that critical glance himself and kept his uniform clean and his back straight. For a while, he’d succeeded.

 

Fifteen years later, he’s lost all that vanity. It doesn’t matter how people look at him, just they don’t look for long. His life has narrowed down to just survival and a distant goal, and there’s no space there to see himself from the outside.

 

It’s quicker than he expects before he can’t see Nott from someone else’s eyes either. Only a few months in it becomes a conscious effort; a couple more and he can’t do it at all. They make it from jail to woods to farmsteads to town, and they scrap up enough money to stay at an inn. They’re curled up together in a tiny bed when they kiss for the first time. Caleb couldn’t say who initiates; they’re holding each other tight and then their mouths are together in the dark, and there’s another kind of shift.

He watches her the next morning as she packs her things up for the day. He’s tried not to think about how he cares for her, about how this partnership is doing more than keeping them both fed, but a surge of affection rises as he looks at her. Her brow is furrowed as she makes sure all the supplies they’ve fought for are safely packed, arranging them with careful hands. The tips of her ears are translucent in the morning light. He wants, absurdly, to stroke one, to feel the velvet-soft hairs near the ends. 

Out of curiosity, he tries to shift his perspective, to remember how the town below them will view her. He reminds himself that she’s a goblin, that he once thought she might try to eat him. But there’s no weight to the memory, no way to see that way again. It seems absurd, that other way of looking. Nothing about her quick motions or goblin features could be less than endearing; even her jagged teeth won’t register as a threat. He still knows how others will see her, that they’ll have to be careful, but he can’t get those strangers’ vision to overlay his own any more.

Nott catches him looking. She blushes, and stammers an apology for the night before, a stream of self-denigration. He must have lost track of things in the dark, she tells him, of course he couldn’t possibly want… 

Caleb knees down and cuts her off with another kiss. “Nott,” he says, “you are the most beautiful person I know,” and means every word of it.


End file.
